Sheera introduced them quietly. “Drypettis Dru, sister to the governor of Mandrigyn. Captain Sun Wolf, chief of the mercenaries of Wrynde.”
Drypettis’ eyes, originally dark with indignation at being presented to a slave, widened with shock, then flickered quickly back to Sheera. “You brought their commander here?”
From the direction of the ship, the whole gaudy crowd of what looked like prostitutes and gladiators came boiling past them, laughing and joking among themselves. At the sight of Sun Wolf, they let fly a volley of appreciative whistles, groans, and commentary so outspoken that Drypettis Dru stiffened with shocked indignation, and blood came stinging up under the thin skin of her cheeks.
“Really, Sheera,” she whispered tightly, “if we must have people like that in the organization, can’t you speak to them about being a little more—more seemly in public?”
“We’re lucky to have them in our organization, Dru,” Sheera said soothingly. “They can go anywhere and know everything—and we will need them all the more now.”
The limpid brown eyes darted back to Sheera. “You mean you were asked for more money than you could offer?”
“No,” Sheera said quietly. “I can’t explain here. I’ve told Gilden to spread the word. There’s a meeting tonight at midnight in the old orangery in my gardens. I’ll explain to everyone then.”
“But...”
Sheera lifted a finger to her for silence. From the direction of the nearest lagoon, a couple of elderly servants were approaching, bowing with profuse apologies to Sheera for being late. She made a formal curtsy to Drypettis and took her leave, walking toward the gondola moored at the foot of a flight of moss-slippery stone stairs without glancing back to see if Sun Wolf were following. After a moment, he did follow, but he felt Drypettis’ eyes on his back all the way.
While one servitor was making Sheera comfortable under a canopy in the waist of the gondola, Sun Wolf handed the trunk down the narrow steps to the other one. Before descending, he looked back along the quay, deserted now, with the masts of the ships tossing restlessly against the scudding rack of the sky. He saw the woman Yirth, like a shadow, come walking slowly down the gangplank and pause at its bottom, leaning upon the bronze bollard there as if she were close to stumbling with exhaustion. Then, after a moment, she straightened up, pulled her plain frieze cloak more tightly about her, and walked away into the darkening city alone.
From his loft above the orangery, Sun Wolf could hear the women arriving. He heard the first one come in silence, her footfalls a faint, tapping echo in the wooden spaces of the huge room. He heard the soft whisper of talk when the second one joined her. From the loft’s high window, he could see their catlike shapes slip through the postern gate at the bottom of the garden that gave onto the Leam Canal and glide silently from the stables, where, Sheera had told him, there was an old smugglers’ tunnel to the cellar of a building on the Leam Lagoon. He watched them scuttle through the shadows of the wet, weedy garden, past the silhouetted lacework of the bathhouse pavilion, and with unpracticed stealth, into the orangery itself.
He had to admit that Sheera had not erred in her choice of location. The orangery was the farthest building from the house, forming the southern end of the quadrangle of its outbuildings. A strip of drying yard, the property wall, and the muddy, greenish canal called Mothersditch separated it from the nearest other building, the great laundries of St. Quillan, which closed up at the third hour of the night. There was little chance they would be overheard if they practiced here.
He lay in the darkness on his narrow cot, listened to the high-pitched, muted babble in the room below, and thought about women.
Women. Human beings who are not men.
Who had said that to him once? Starhawk—last winter, or the winter before, when she was explaining something about that highly individual fighting style of hers...It was something he had not thought of at the time. Now it came back to him, with the memory of those gray, enigmatic eyes.
Human beings who are not men.
Even as a child, he had understood that the demons that haunted the empty marshlands around his village were entities like himself, intelligent after their fashion, but not human. Push them, and they did not react like men.
He had met men who feared women and he understood that fear. Not a physical fear—indeed, it was this type of man who was often guilty of the worst excesses during the sacking of a city. This fear was something deeper. And yet the other side of that coin was the yearning to touch, to possess, the desire for the soft and alien flesh.
There was no logic to it. But training this troop wasn’t going to be like training a troop of inexperienced boys, or of men, none of whom weighed over a hundred and thirty pounds.
The day’s rain had broken after sundown. A watery gleam of moonlight painted the slanted wall above his head. With the cold wind, voices from the garden blew in—Sheera’s, speaking to those wealthier women who had come, as if to a party, in their gondolas to the front door of her great, marble-faced townhouse. Women’s voices, like music in the wet night.
Was it training, he wondered, that made women distrustful of one another? The fact that so much was denied them? Maybe, especially in a city like Mandrigyn, where the women were close-kept and forbidden to do those things that would free them from the tutelage of men. He’d seen that before—the hothouse atmosphere of gossip and petty jealousies, of wrongs remembered down through the years and unearthed, fresh and stinking, on the occasions of quarrels. Would women be different if they were brought up differently?
Would men?
His father’s bitter, mocking laughter echoed briefly through his mind.
Then he became aware that someone was standing by the foot of his bed.
He had not seen her arrive, nor heard the petal-fall of her feet on the floorboards. Only now he saw her face, floating like a misshapen skull above the dark blob of the birthmark, framed in the silver-shot masses of her hair. He was aware that she had been standing there for some time.
“What the...” he began, rising, and she held up her hand.
“I have only come to lay on you the bounding-spells to hold the poison in your veins harmless, so long as you remain in Mandrigyn,” she said. “As I am not a true wizard, not come to the fullness of my power, I cannot work spells at a distance by the mind alone.” Like a skeleton hand, her white fingers moved in the air, and she added, “It is done.”
“You did it all right on the ship,” he grumbled sullenly.
One end of that black line of eyebrow moved. “You think so? It is one of the earliest things wizards know—how to come and go unnoticed, even by someone who might be looking straight at them.” She gathered her cloak about her, a rustling in the darkness, preparing to go. “They are downstairs now. Will you join them?”
“Why should I?” he asked, settling his shoulders back against the wall at the bed’s head. “I’m only the hired help.”
The rosewood voice was expressionless. “Perhaps to see what you will have to contend with? Or to let them see it?”
After a moment, he got to his feet, the movement of his shoulders easing a little the unaccustomed pressure of the chain. As he came closer to her, he saw how ravaged Yirth’s face was by exhaustion. The black smudges beneath her eyes, the harsh lines of strain, did nothing for her looks. The last days of the voyage were worn into her face and spirit as coal dust wore itself into a miner’s hands—to be lightened by time, maybe, but never to be eradicated.
He paused, looking into those cold, green eyes. “Does Sheera know this?” he asked. “If, as you say, you aren’t a true wizard—if you haven’t come to the fullness of your power—it’s insanity for you to go against a wizard who’s been exercising his powers for a hundred and fifty years—who’s outlived every other wizard in the world and seems to be deathless. Does Sheera know you’re not even in his class?”
“She does.” Yirth’s voice was cool and bitter in the darkness of the room. “It is be
cause of Altiokis that I have not—and will never—come to the fullness of my power as a wizard. My master Chilisirdin gave me the knowledge and the training that those who are born with a mage’s powers must have. It is that training which allows me to wring the winds to my commanding, to hold you prisoned, to see through the illusions and the traps with which Altiokis guards the mines. But Chilisirdin was murdered—murdered before she could give to me the secret of the Great Trial. And without that, I will never have the Power.”
Sun Wolf’s eyes narrowed. “The what?” he asked. In the language of the West, the word connoted a judicial ordeal as well as tribulation; in the northern dialect, the word was sometimes used to mean death as well.
The misshapen nostrils flared in scorn. “You are a man who prides himself on his ignorance of these things,” she remarked. “Like love, you can never be sure when they will cross your life, will or nil. Of what the Great Trial consisted I never knew—only that it killed those who were not born with the powers of a mage. Its secret was handed down from master to pupil through generations. I have sought for many years to find even one of that last generation of wizards, or one of their students, who might know what it was—who might have learned how one did this thing that melds the power born into those few children with the long learning they must acquire from a master wizard. But Altiokis has murdered them all, or driven them into hiding so deep that they dare not reveal to any what they are—or what they could have been. That is why I threw in my lot with Sheera. Altiokis has robbed us all—all of us who would have been mages and who are now condemned to this half-life of thwarted longings. It is for me to take revenge upon him, or to die in the trying.”
“That’s your choice,” the Wolf said quietly. “What I object to is your hauling me with you—me and all those stupid women downstairs who think they’re going to be trained to be warriors.”
The voices rose to them, a light distant babbling, like the pleasant sounds of a spring brook in the darkness. Yirth’s eyes flashed like a cat’s. “They also have their revenge to take,” she replied. “And as for you, you would die for the sake of the two pennies they will put upon your eyes, to pay the death gods to ferry you to Hell.”
“Yes,” he agreed tightly. “But that’s my choice—of time and manner and whom I take with me when I go.”
She sniffed. “You have no choice, my friend. You were made what you are by the father who spawned you—as I was made when I was born with the talent for wizardry in my heart and this mark like a piece of thrown offal on my face. You had no more choice in the matter than you had about the color of your eyes.”
She gathered the dark veil about her once again, to cover her ugliness, and in silence descended the stairs.
After a moment, Sun Wolf followed her.
A few candles had been lighted on the table near the staircase, but their feeble light penetrated no more than a dozen feet into the vast wooden vault of the orangery. All that could be seen in that huge darkness was the multiplied reflection in hundreds of watching eyes. Like the wind dying on the summer night, the sound of talking hushed as Sun Wolf stepped into the dim halo of light, a big, feral, golden man, with Yirth like a fell black shadow at his heels.
He had not expected to see so many women. Startled, he cast a swift glance at Yirth, who returned an enigmatic stare. “Where the hell did they come from?” he whispered.
She brushed the thick, silver-shot mane back over her shoulders. “Gilden Shorad,” she replied softly. “She and her partner Wilarne M’Tree are the foremost hairdressers in Mandrigyn. There isn’t a woman in the city they cannot speak to at will, from noblewomen like Sheera and Drypettis Dru down to common whores.”
Sun Wolf looked out at them again—there must have been close to three hundred women there, sitting on the worn and dusty pine of the floor or on the edges of the big earth tubs that contained the orange trees. Smooth, beardless faces turned toward him; he was aware of watching eyes, bright hair, and small feet tucked up underneath the colors of the long skirts. Whether it was from their numbers alone, or whether the hypocaust under the floor had been fired, the huge, barnlike room was warm, and the smell of old dirt and citrus was mingled with the smells of women and of perfume. The rustle of their gowns and of the lace on the wrists of the rich ones was like a summer forest.
Then silence.
Into that silence, Sheera spoke.
“We got back from Kedwyr today,” she said without preamble, and her clear, rather deep voice penetrated easily into the fusty brown shadows of the room. “All of you know why we went. You put your money into the venture and your hearts—did without things, some of you, to contribute; or put yourselves in danger; or did things that you’d rather not have done to get the money. You know the value of what you gave—I certainly do.”
She stood up, the gold of her brocade gown turned her into a glittering flame, the stiff lace of her collar tangling with the fire-jewels in her hair. From where he stood behind her, Sun Wolf could see the faces of the women, rapt to silence, their eyes drinking in her words.
“All of you know the plan,” she continued, leaning her rump against the edge of the table, her gem-bright hands relaxed among the folds of her skirts. “To hire mercenaries, storm the mines, free the men, and liberate the city from Altiokis and the pack of vultures he’s put in charge. I want you to know right away that I couldn’t hire anyone.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised,” she went on. “Winter’s coming. Nobody wants to fight a winter war. Every man’s first loyalty is to himself, and nobody wanted to risk Altiokis’ wrath, not even for gold. I understand that.”
Her voice rose a little, gaining strength and power. “But for them it’s only money. For us it’s our lives. There isn’t a woman here who doesn’t have a man—lover, husband, father—who either died at Iron Pass or was enslaved there. And that was every decent man in the city; every man who had the courage to march in Tarrin’s army in the first place, every man who understood what would happen if Altiokis added Mandrigyn to his empire. We’ve seen it in other cities—at Racken Scrag, and at Kilpithie. We’ve seen him put the corrupt, the greedy, and the unscrupulous into power—the men who’ll toad-eat to him for the privilege of making their own money out of us. We’ve seen him put such a man in charge here.”
Their eyes went to Drypettis Dru, who had come in with Sheera and taken her seat as close to the table as she could, almost literally sitting at her leader’s feet. Throughout the speech, she had been silent, gazing up at Sheera with the passionate gleam of fanaticism in her brown eyes, her little hands clenched desperately in her lap; but as the women looked at her, she sat up a bit.
“You have all heard the evil reports of Derroug,” Sheera said in a quieter tone. “I think there are some of you who have—had experience with his—habits.” Her dark eyes flashed somberly. “You will know that his own sister has turned against him and has been like my right hand in organizing our cause.”
“Not turned against him,” Drypettis corrected in her rather high, breathless voice. “My brother’s actions have always been deplorable and repugnant to me. He has disgraced our house, which was the highest in the city. For that I shall never forgive him. Nor for his lewdness toward you, nor—”
“Nor shall any of us forgive him, Drypettis,” Sheera said, cutting short what threatened to turn into a discursive catalog of the governor’s sins. “We have all seen the evil effects of Altiokis’ rule starting here in Mandrigyn. If it is to be stopped, we must stop it now.
“We must stop it,” she repeated, and her voice pressed heavily on the words. “We are fighting for more than just ourselves. We all have children. We all have families—or had them.” A murmur stirred like wind through the room. “Since we can’t hire men, we have to learn to do what we can ourselves.”
She looked about her, into that shadowy, eye-glittering silence. The candlelight caught in the stiff fabric of her golden gown, making her flash like an upraised sword blade.
“Had to,” said a big, cowlike woman, whose whips of ivory-fair hair marked her as a relation of Gilden Shorad’s. “Woulda starved, else.”
“And you’ve taken Gilden’s daughter Tisa for your apprentice, too, haven’t you? Sister Quincis, they tell me they’ve even been appointing women as provisional priests in the Cathedral, something they haven’t done in hundreds of years. Fillibi, you’re running your husband’s store—and running it damned well, too...And nobody cares whether any of you wears a veil or not, or has a chaperon. Business is business.
“Well, our business is defending the city and freeing the men. We’ve all proved women can work as well as men. I think they can fight as well as men, too.
“I think all of you know,” she continued, her voice growing grave, “that if you put a woman with her back to the wall, fighting, not for herself, but for her man, her children, and her home, she’s braver than a man, tougher than a man—hell, she’s tougher than a cornered rat. And, ladies, that’s where we are.”
If she asked for volunteers, they’d turn out to a woman, the Wolf thought. She has a king’s magic; that magic of trust.
Damned arrogant bitch.
Sheera’s voice was low; a pin could have been heard dropping in the breathing silence of the orangery. “No,” she said, “I couldn’t hire men to do it. But I hired one man—to come here and teach us to do it ourselves. If we’re willing to fight. There’s a difference between just giving money, no matter how much money, and picking up a sword yourself. And I tell you, ladies—now is the time to see that difference.”
They could not applaud, for the sound would carry, but the silence was a magic crown on those dark curls. Point them the way, Sun Wolf thought cynically, and they’d march to the mines tonight, the silly bitches, and be dead by morning. Like too many rulers, Sheera had the quality of making others ready to go out and fight without ever asking themselves what it would cost them.
The Ladies of Mandrigyn Page 8